With the advent of digital imaging and digital storage of images there now exists a huge demand to generate digital images of prior produced tangible articles which have no digital counterpart. As one illustrative example, conventional photographs which have no digital counterpart are routinely scanned to generate an article image which may be stored in a memory and retrieved from memory for viewing. However, conventional scanners may not allow for annotation discrete from the imageable surface of the photograph, or allow for a desired level of annotation for association with the photograph, or subsequent retrieval of the annotation along with the digital image.
Accordingly, in the illustrative example of the photograph, the annotation may have to be included on or in the image face of the photograph in which case the annotation may be permanent and may be objectionable to the owner or others subsequently viewing or scanning the photograph, or the annotation may be included on or in the back face of the photograph in which case both the image face and the back face of the photograph require scanning to store the annotation in memory, and then the annotation may not be associated with the image face on retrieval of the digital image.
Additionally, many articles have a construction on or in which an annotation may not be practical or possible. As an additional illustrative example, a quilt of woven and stitched textiles may not allow annotation on the surface, or annotation of the surface may be objectionable, or may devalue the quilt.
It would be advantageous if annotations could be associated with the imageable surfaces of articles and in the stored article images without having to actually annotate on or in an imageable surface of the article.